I can't rule out the possibility of even better results with the squatting ... but I rather doubt it. He used a rather unorthodox deadlifting style which was more akin to a hybrid squat-deadlift. I don't think most trainees realize how much quad stimulation the deadlift affords. And my son's style was even more quad-dominant.

I never sought to correct him because he doubled his starting weight before I even saw how he was doing it and also because it was evident that he was protecting his lower back. So, who was I to mess with providence when my little boy was deadlifting 2.5 X bodyweight via a slightly unorthodox style ? It wasn't like he aspired to be a powerlifter anyway.

Nowadays he doesn't even deadlift. Rather, he maintains his physique by cruising, doing pretty much what he wants, when he wants to do it. And the only legwork he usually does are lunges, step-ups and the like.

Just got off the phone with my son and he's excited about a routine he's started. It's very simple: he'll do a set of pullups. Then he'll do twice as many pushups as pullups. Then he'll do three times as many bodyweight squats as pushups.

Today his workout looked like: 9-18-36 ... 8-16-32 ... 7-14-28 ... and on down to 1-2-3. 55 total pullups, 90 total pushups and (too lazily to calculate) probably close to 200 squats.

I'm thinking we will go with Strong Lifts. But their charts have him, based on his weight and max amounts, starting his bench at 70 pounds. Our last bench workout was 15 x 75, 10 x 105, 5 x 120, 2 x 135. So we will start heavier than the chart.

Normally I would say just go by the chart because the weight goes up rather quickly, however since you have a short time to make progress just go with what feels right.

Also, gonna post a series on bench form that may be helpful, not a different routine just some coaching pointers that may help you and your sons increase their bench. Some people say the change in form alone leads to strength gains.

Just a couple of thoughts from my experiment on squats. The first week was great even the back to back squat days. However, I think the way I scheduled my workouts wore me out even more. I was in the gym 6 days a week, 3 days just squatting, 1 day I did squat and bench and then I did shoulder press and deadlift on their own days. I ate a lot, stretched and foam rolled but nothing was going to stop the soreness. I haven't done any leg work since Thursday and I am still sore.

So my advice for what its worth: eat big, drink lots of water, stretch more than you ever have before and do any other lifting on the same days you are in the gym to bench.

We made one adjustment. We started at 65% of his max instead of 70%. We started with Bench yesterday so that is 100 instead of 110. It went well. Just planning to see how the lifts go and we will adjust as necessary. He also did some ab work with his brother. We finished with barbell rows.

We will be headed to today's session in a few minutes. That will be squats. Probably will also do military press and nose breakers too.

My legs are still sore from the squats on Sunday. Not bad sore but just enough to let me know about it. We did the squat routine at 65% instead of 70% just like we did the bench routine. It went well. We did some military presses and some split squats too.

I think he was very glad that we had done that work over the weekend after having the week off when they started back on the workouts.

I met him and my wife for lunch today and he had on a sleeveless shirt. He is not big by any means but I could definitely tell a difference in his arms. I know he has gotten stronger but his max lifts have not shown it yet with the exception of increasing his squat by 5 pounds. But he is really showing some muscle on his skinny little arms.

Typing this on my phone. They had a really tough week at football this past week so all we did was assistance lifts. They hit bench hard and heavy this week so we just did his bench routine with more reps of a little less weight. We got the first lift in on squats but that was as far as we got with Smolov last week. His brother has them doing the AB workout that Bradley Cooper did to prepare for the A Team. It is brutal. He was very glad that we hit the weights last Saturday and Sunday. He has golf tryouts coming up so we are on the course today.

We did the bench workout yesterday with 4 sets of 18 reps then 16, 15 and 14. I upped his weight by 5 pounds and he handled it fine. We have started including him doing up downs and catching tennis balls when he comes up followed by situps and catch the tennis balls. Then he runs across the room and catches them. Yesterday we did it with a football. Then I had his brother show him some stuff to do when blocking and when going out for a pass. He had some really interesting things to teach him. It's no wonder nobody liked to see him splitting out to their side of the field.

I wanted to mention the bench workout they have been doing in their workouts because I think it shows how he is getting stronger.

They have been doing 5 sets of 3 reps each. The weight goes up each set. For him his first set is 71% of his bench max, followed by a set at 80%, then 87%, then 90% and then the last set at 97%. That last set is within 5 pounds of his max and he gets the first 2 reps in with no help but the last one he said he had to have some help. I told him it seemed to me that if he could do that workout and then 2 reps just 5 pounds less than his max that his max must be higher now. He agrees but they have not done any max work lately.

Good stuff, I am a fan of lower reps with higher weight to improve strength.

And while doing a true max out is cool from an ego perspective its not really necessary to prove strength gain. If your son can hit that 97% again next week and get all 3 reps he obviously got stronger. No need to max out to prove it.

Well, we will lose our "personal trainer", big brother, next week. It's not quite time for him to go back for his sophomore year of college but he has to be back to help get things set up for football practice where he is an assistant/manager.

It seems like we just started working out together around the first of May and now he will be leaving us and younger brother starts football practice 2 weeks from Monday.

I can tell a difference in the younger's body since we started in May along with his Summer football workouts. We will keep at it.

Well, I'm down for a little while. I've got 2 vertabrae out in my lower back. If you've never had that happen to you, you are blessed. With all the weight work I've had no problem. However, yesterday morning I half bent over to look at some papers and WHAM! I will still go with the boys, one more time anyway since older one is leaving Sunday, but I don't think I will be doing anything for a little while. I'll just have to take the younger one and put him through his workouts. I'll just be moving kind of slow.

Well, we've had a big wrench thrown into our workouts. We had been working out in our high school's weight room but that is at an end now. There had been some using our baseball field and gym and that was ended for liability reasons. We were the next step.

For the time being we are going to do our workouts at home. We don't have much in the way of equipment but we do have some dumbbells. We will be doing a wide variety of workouts with them along with doing stadium steps and chin ups and dips up at our stadium. And, of course, we will be making extensive use of pushups.

In the meantime I'm going to be looking into the cost of our local fitness center as well as what it would cost to purchase what we need to outfit our own home gym. Only problem there is that we have one in college and one turning 16 in a few months so the budget is a little tight.